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Page 12 of December 2012 O.Henry Magazine

A Bittersweet Year for The Avett Brothers

GREENSBORO — Scott Avett sits with his cat on the back porch of his home in Concord surrounded by the calm of the woods and a cow pasture. On this dank, winter morning, this poet, artist, musician and songwriter describes the weather as “sitting still.” It’s the perfect setting for Scott to reflect on the past year and ponder the year to come.

Scott is the elder brother to Seth Avett, who bonded together in 2000 with bassist Bob Crawford to form the now famous band, The Avett Brothers.

With a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album for their latest release, “The Carpenter,” a modeling stint with The Gap, numerous television appearances and articles in magazines, such as “Rolling Stone,” it would appear that 2011 has been more than kind to The Avett Brothers.

But the year has also been bittersweet as the band has huddled together to support Crawford’s daughter, Hallie, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011.

As a closely-knit band, Scott says one of greatest challenges they dealt with last year was not having Crawford on tour when he took time off to be with his family.

“Overcoming that was something we really just had to have all hands on deck, although we had Paul Defiglia come along and help as we tried to stick together as a band. But, you know, one of the challenges artistically and as a group was to try to remind ourselves what this is all about and how enjoyable it can be if you let it.”

Despite public accolades for their accomplishments as a band, Scott says the favorite moments of the year were memories made with close friends and family.

“A lot of publicity is nice, and it’s icing on the cake, and boy, we sure are honored because everybody wants to feel loved and wanted, but the best moments have been with friends and family and times like yesterday, which was a recovering day for Hallie.”

When asked if Scott could sum up the year with just one word, his first response was “educational,” in terms of the challenges that forced the band to grow.

Then Scott added the word, “gratitude,” for the ability to perform on stage. And finally, he settled on the word to best describe 2011.

“The thankfulness word,” he says. “How do we say we are thankful? We were taught so much last year, how lucky we are to be on stage and how humbled we are. The word has to be “gift.” Last year the lessons we learned were a gift.”

The band has been on a break from the road just long enough to crave the stage and to re-evaluate how they will approach their dynamics and music in the year to come. They’ve parted ways with drummer Jacob Edwards whom Scott refers to as “an amazing drummer, musician, and terrific fellow to be on stage with,” and have spent more time rehearsing than they usually do when on the road. Their main focus for 2013 is to “put everything aside in terms of what we are releasing and the events that are happening. We think about how we live and how we express ourselves through our performance and how is that going to change,” Scott says, adding that the band intends to release some music in 2013 as well as do some recording. He reminisces about the band’s humble beginnings, playing at Greensboro’s The Green Bean in 2004, and says he’s looking forward to playing at The Greensboro Coliseum New Year’s Eve.

“Greensboro has been so supportive from the beginning,” Scott says. “We’ve played lots of shows in Greensboro, and I haven’t forgotten a one. They’ve all been pretty special, and I expect the New Year’s show to be just the same, only better.”

Contact Carole Perkins at cpguilford@aol.com

****

Scott Avett in his own words

On songwriting:

I certainly compose in my mind in a visual, compositional way. I sort of look at a song as a room. … There’s this one little room where I live for the moment in this teeny, tiny room and that’s kind of how I see it, and in between it mentally I’ve developed an endless source of metaphors or a way that I can play on that, and I think I do that a lot. I guess it’s pretty organic. I just hope it’s different every time. I’ve got a stack I’m embarrassed to say, I mean literally there are thousands of words of unfinished lines, songs verses and choruses that I really can’t finish all of them, and then one day they just move. Like a lot of things, I’m just trying to answer a question I have no answer for.

On success:

I always thought we worked hard from the beginning to keep our mindset where we define success and it’s that success that carried us. So, I guess what I’m saying is to get a magazine or a nomination or our picture in this or that it’s great, but if we don’t get it, it absolutely means nothing, and it never did mean anything, and you have to remember that. It’s only good if you get it; if you don’t get it, it’s doubly fine as well.

On Greensboro:

People cared so much for us and for music and art in general. … It is like a homecoming. Also, my folks met at UNCG while they were there together, so there’s a lot of history in Greensboro for us. Playing any coliseum for us is spectacular and amazing watching the growth over time.

On balancing music and family:

I think that work is the most important regulator in terms of keeping us in touch with our spirits and with God and with the world. I think that I can have a lot of anxiety, and putting myself in a task - be it splitting wood, cleaning a room, working on artwork, or building a chicken house - then I find my anxiety truly just goes to the side. I’m not putting family aside, but I think being busy is crucial to your well-being and health, so there’s no end to what can be done when you connect yourself with that, and involving the family only tightens the bond between my children and me. If my daughter wakes up and I’m going to the studio to draw or to paint or print, if I can have her watching that, she can be taught just by watching what the discipline is. For me, incorporating the family as much as possible is crucial and I hope to incorporate that more in the future with music as well as traveling with them.

The dangerous thing for us that we’ve really had to work on in terms of the work ethic and productivity is that when it goes into the realm of ambition and success there’s such a fine line between when it turns into something very disgusting. It’s very dangerous to the people around you because it can become all self-consuming. That is a line I try very hard to stay away from and that I used to indulge in.

-- As told to Carole Perkins

On the road with the Avetts

Thursday, October 6, 2011 (updated , 2011 7:25 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

GREENSBORO — Pete Schroth takes a break from cleaning the gutters on his Greensboro home to munch on rosemary french fries at one of his favorite local restaurants, Sticks and Stones.

Between bites, Schroth recounts his journey from his days of booking the Avett Brothers to traveling the world the past two years as the now internationally known band’s stage manager and lighting designer.

The journey began in 2004 at Schroth’s former coffee shop, the Green Bean, in Greensboro.

A few regular customers persuaded him to book the Avett Brothers. (Now, the band includes brothers Scott and Seth Avett, Bob Crawford on bass and Joe Kwon on cello.)

Schroth was hesitant to feature a band he had never before heard, but he took a chance and, for the first time in Green Bean history, sold tickets to the show.

The cost? Two dollars. Now, a ticket to an Avett Brothers’ concert can cost $25 to $38.

That night, the band played to a sell-out crowd of 99.

“The night of the show a gentleman walked up to me and said, 'Is this your place?’ ” Schroth recalls. “I said, 'Yes sir,’ to which he answered, 'Well, my boys are about to blow the doors off of it.’ “

That was Schroth’s first chat with Jim Avett, Scott and Seth’s father. Years later, it was Jim Avett who took Schroth to the airport to meet the band in Phoenix for his first gig as its stage manager.

“I was pretty excited to see what was about to happen,” Schroth recalls. “It was a crazy, insane, high-energy gig, but I missed most of it, working behind the counter serving up coffees and PBRs. It was a great night and most absolutely one of my favorite shows I have never seen.”

Decide what to be and go be it

Schroth went on to book the Avett Brothers in 2006 at his former music venue, the Flying Anvil in Greensboro, as well as twice at Greensboro’s War Memorial Auditorium in 2007 and 2008. Along the way, seeds of a desire to work for the Avett Brothers were planted in him, although he never really expected anything to come his way.

His business venture with the Flying Anvil lasted only eight or nine months before it closed. Schroth says it was a terrible blow to his confidence. He retreated to the country with his wife, Anne, and their children. He bought some goats and tried to sort things out. He worked briefly at a veterinarian’s office and as a handyman at Greensboro Montessori School.

Then one day, a phone call from Scott Avett changed the course of Schroth’s life. Avett wanted to offer him a job.

“I was caught off guard,” Schroth says. “I had a lot of questions, but Scott was incredibly gracious and patient. I couldn’t just blindly pack my bags and hop on a bus, leaving my family behind. My family is my life, and I had to be sure it was the right thing to do.”

As Schroth contemplated accepting the job, he visualized an image of a wagon belonging to him and his family and hooking it up to an Avett wagon train. With the Green Bean sold and the Flying Anvil closed, Schroth visualized his family sitting high on a hill in an old, weathered covered wagon.

“I imagined we suddenly could see a wagon train down in the valley below, and there’s lots of music and good times and a chance for a better future. I’d be a damn fool not to head down there and join up.

“So, I took my covered wagon, full of my family and my things, and headed down into that valley. That was that. Our wagons are still hitched.”

Road full of promise

A typical day before an Avett Brothers’ concert starts about 11 a.m., unloading the trailer and setting up the stage. Schroth’s wife, Anne, prints and sews the stage backdrops through her company, Red Canary.

By 3 p.m., the band does a sound check for 30 minutes or two hours, depending on the venue. Doors usually open about 7 p.m., and the band and crew gather for a quick huddle before Schroth runs to his task as lighting designer.

The show ends usually about 11 p.m. or midnight. Then another two hours are needed to break down the gear before they are back on the bus, physically exhausted but mentally exhilarated and ready for their next destination.

Schroth compares the tour bus to a submarine with a hall of beds that is dark and quiet. There are 12 bunk beds stacked three high. There’s also a front room, kitchen, dining room and bathroom. Although privacy is almost nonexistent, people may use a smaller room toward the back of the bus to get away and maybe read a book or send a few emails.

The Avett Brothers average about 90 to 100 shows per year. Schroth is on the road five to 10 days at a time, although the recent Europe and Australia tour lasted the longest at six weeks.

On Saturday, Schroth will be back on his home turf when the Avett Brothers perform to a sell-out crowd at the White Oak Amphitheatre in Greensboro.

Being on the road can take its toll. There is homesickness, long hours and tight quarters. But there’s also good music, great people and priceless moments.

The following are email excerpts Schroth sent from the road during that recent tour.

June 23

So, here we are in London, and I have thought of another oddity of being on the road. We travel in a pack of nine guys, sometimes 10. We are always together and almost always in tight spaces. On the bus, dressing rooms, hotel rooms. Our world becomes very surreal. Then suddenly we are surrounded by a big crowd of people for a few hours and then poof … we are back on the bus to the next city. We go from small and solitary to largely public very quickly.

Aug. 17

I have always been a visual artist. I cannot play a single instrument. I can whistle pretty good, but music eludes me. I watch these guys as they stand face to face and work out a brand-new song, a chord progression or even a good old-time number. The silent communication between the whole band is what leaves me dumbfounded time and time again. Then, suddenly, they are up on stage in front of hundreds of people playing a Bruce Springsteen cover, and the crowd is going crazy.

Last night in Munich, Germany, was one of those shows that made the hair on my arms stand up. Every now and again, the band and their audience become one big mass of energy. There is no separation. Each group feeds off of the other, and each group feeds the other. There is an equal exchange of energy, and something truly magical happens, something spiritual.

Cave men made music. It is one of our oldest traditions. It draws up together and makes us one. Take it all away and we can still whistle a tune.

Aug. 23

So, here I sit in a hotel room in Amsterdam. My oldest boy back home just went to karate practice, wifey is gearing up for the boys to return to school, and the young one has lost both his front teeth. It is hard to be away from home. The adrenaline of a show, the smiling faces, the crowd … it is all a trade-off. We depend oh so very much on the crowd to lift us up. We arrive exhausted, but once show time rolls around, the juices start flowing, then it’s on. The energy sparks. Tomorrow night we will all be refreshed and ready to rock out.

August 29

Looking back on all the experiences of the last three weeks touring through Europe. Truly incredible. Great energy. I think the best show for me may have been to a small Danish crowd of retirees that were somewhat trapped in a tent due to a major rain storm. I don’t know if any of them had ever heard a single Avett song, but they had a blast, and so did we. Good times.

I’m coming home ...

Back in Greensboro, Schroth never unpacks his toiletry bag but completely shifts gears into family life. Mundane tasks such as cleaning gutters or giving the cat medicine are welcome rituals. He says thoughts of his wife, kids and friends are what keeps him moving on the road.

“Throwing a baseball with the kids, having a glass of wine on the front porch with friends while the cicadas hum, all these things are mine,” Schroth says. “If all of this falls apart tomorrow, I know for certain that my wife and my kids and my friends will be there for me. I want to keep that whole.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

Words matter most to songwriter

Thursday, June 23, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:00 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

If you get the pleasure of seeing Jonathan Byrd perform, don’t make the mistake of complimenting his music.

With careful politeness, the tall, lean cowboy and poet will let you know he is first and foremost a songwriter over a musician or performer.

It’s the reason why The Chicago Tribune named Byrd one of the top 50 songwriters of the last 50 years alongside Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and John Prine to name a few.
His new CD, “Cackalack,” premiered at No. 1 on Roots Music Report’s folk radio chart within weeks of its release earlier this year.

Byrd is weaving his way back from a four-month tour to promote “Cackalack,” which he calls his “homeland manifesto.”

“These songs are memoirs, photos from my family album,” Byrd says. “They are songs about real, everyday places. The Outer Banks, where wild ponies still run; Rockwell, where I sang 'Amazing Grace’ to my father’s ashes; Cape Fear, the namesake of the hospital where I was born; and 95 South, a great river of humanity that brings me rolling back from a hard tour.”

The Carrboro native was surrounded by music all his life, singing Southern gospel songs in the church where his father preached and his mother played piano.
“We had a piano in the house, and Mom gave me some lessons. I did really well, but I got bored with the workbook/lesson plan style,” Byrd says. “My brother had a guitar, and that was cooler.”

His brother, Gray, gave him his first guitar lesson at age 8, and he later learned music theory in his high school jazz class. But when he got his own guitar, Byrd was hooked.

“Once I got my own guitar, I found a place to put all my teen angst, but it didn’t help my schoolwork at all,” he says. “I probably set records for non-attendance and spent a lot of time running around in the deep woods of western Orange County.”

After a four-year stint in the Navy, Byrd spent time in Virginia Beach playing in a rock band, and then moved back to Carrboro where some friends told him about Rockbridge Festival, an old-time fiddler’s convention in Buena Vista, Va. That trip became a life-changing experience.

“It changed my life, and it changed my music, just banging away on an A chord for hours at a time and sipping corn liquor,” Byrd says. “I didn’t know the songs, and I didn’t care.

“Whatever these people had a hold of, I wanted some of it. It shot straight down into my veins like lightning and made my hair stand up on end. The music was intense, lyrically cut down to the bone.”

With a determination to write songs that “sounded old not because they were old but because they were written in an old style,” Byrd wrote tunes such as “Velma,” the story of the woman who killed his grandfather . Velma was a friend of the family when Byrd’s grandmother died in 1969.

“Six months later, my grandfather, Jennings Paul Barfield, married Velma,” Byrd says. “Two years into their marriage, Velma killed with arsenic poisoning. About six years went by, and Velma poisoned her boyfriend. She eventually confessed to killing her own mother and a few more people. She was executed in 1984.”

Byrd started touring in 2000 as a solo performer, winning the North Carolina Songwriters CoOp Song Contest in Carrboro that year and the coveted New Folk Competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas in 2003.

As Byrd makes his way across the country, from camping out in the Texas hill country to meeting with publishers and managers in Nashville, Tenn., he’s looking forward to coming home. He is excited to do the simple things in his life, much like the subject matter of his songs: mowing the grass and playing with his little boy.

“It feels really great to be going home, although it doesn’t feel any closer yet,” Byrd says from the road. “I think nothing but my driveway will do.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

With a little help from her friends

Thursday, April 14, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:00 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

Singer and songwriter Martha Bassett has long been a respected icon of the Triad music scene with her classically trained voice, which has been described as “angelic” and “crystalline.”

This month, with the release of her fourth album, “The Goodbye Party,” Bassett gives listeners a glimpse of her personal diary with a versatile palette of songs that either send shivers down your spine or make your toes tap.

But Bassett didn’t write this diary of love and loss alone. About half of the 12 songs were written by Bassett, the rest by personal friends and band members: Sam Frazier (guitar and piano), Pat Lawrence (bass), Eddie Walker (drums) and Ben Singer (keyboards and banjo). Together, they lead a journey through the pathos of loneliness and weariness but always with the hope and comfort of coming home.

The opening track, “The Goodbye Party,” a melancholy song co-written by Bassett and Singer, sets the tone and pace for the rest of the album.

“We actually had the title to this song before we wrote it,” Bassett says. “I think of the song itself as a vignette of the idea of separation and loss. I like the chorale at the end because it creates intensity and sets up the central theme of the record.”

Bassett cranks up the mood with “Leave Me Behind,” a song loosely based on the old-time tune “Pretty Polly.” Bassett belts out the lyrics, “Show me you want me and mean it this time or pick up your heart, boy, and leave me behind.”

“It’s funny that a song with such sad lyrics always makes people tap their feet and smile,” Bassett says.

One of Bassett’s favorite songs on the album is “Whisper,” written for Bassett by her longtime collaborator Sam Frazier and arranged by Josh Weesner. A song about heartbreak and the end of a long-term relationship, Bassett found this one difficult to sing in the beginning.

“ 'Whisper’ was hard to sing at first because it was so personal, but now it’s one of my favorites,” Bassett says. “Compositionally speaking, Sam did a great job creating an arc that really lends itself to strings and brass.”

Another personally painful song that Bassett sings is “Holly Golightly,” a song about the wedding of Kelly Jo Petersen Womble, an artist and gallery/shop owner in Winston-Salem and one of the primary people responsible for revitalizing its downtown.

“Kelly had been battling cancer and died shortly after her wedding, during the recording of this disc,” Bassett says. “Clare Fader had written the words for the wedding, and Sam helped set the music for the memorial service, which is where I first sang it. It’s still very difficult to perform this song live.”

In addition to originals, Bassett sings covers from two local luminaries Bruce Piephoff and Laurelyn Dossett, managing to channel their distinctive styles into her own.

“My goal is not to establish myself as a great singer/songwriter, although I’m very much learning the craft,” she says. “My goal is to sing great songs. Every song on (the album) that wasn’t written by me was written by a personal friend. That feels good.”

Bassett and Frazier agree the difference in this album compared to her previous releases was in the production. Both cite Pat Lawrence for his artistic efforts on the album, and Bassett also credits him with having strong ideas that she says created a denser and broader palette both instrumentally and vocally.

“I’m a lucky girl,” Bassett says. “These guys are my best friends, and we work so well together creatively. It’s an unusual and precious thing, and I don’t ever take it for granted.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

Trinkets Create Links to Past

Thursday, March 10, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:01 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

GREENSBORO — Janice Young carefully plucks trinkets, charms and odd earrings from a box of vintage jewelry hauled down from a dusty attic. With a well-trained eye, she groups the pieces into piles that she’ll later use to create bracelets, adorned with keepsakes and tokens from the past.

It’s her way of preserving memories because, as Young discovered, sometimes a memory is all you have left of a loved one.

In 2004, Young’s oldest son, Deebs, was killed in a car accident while on a roller hockey trip in Georgia. Deebs was a superb athlete, gifted with intelligence and multitudes of friends. He was 15.

That tragedy motivated Young to begin collecting mementos for her children.

“I started gathering things that were meaningful, like the jewelry Don (her husband) gave me when each child was born,” says Young of Greensboro. “I collected game pieces from the game Monopoly that we used to play as a family and jewelry from my parents and grandparents. I thought it was important for Sloan and Kemp (her children) to have tangible memories of people important to them.”

When Deebs died, Young wanted to honor the people who helped her family cope with their loss. So about two years ago, she started making necklaces and bracelets from her own collection of keepsakes, as well as trinkets or vintage jewelry pieces from her customers. The styles of bracelets range from chunky and elaborate to simple and elegant. Young puts a new spin on traditional charm bracelets by using watch chains or strands of chain belonging to the customer. Making them has been a positive outlet for her.

“The bending of the metal, sanding rough edges, finding the right balance of charms is very therapeutic to me,” she says. “I like knowing that people will enjoy wearing these bracelets that represent events and loved ones that have been meaningful in their lives.”

For her own bracelets, Young likes to group items in threes to symbolize her children, sometimes using old buttons and typewriter keys with letters to indicate the initials. She often wears a necklace she designed using old watch chains hooked together to make a lariat. She has a locket from her grandmother, engraved with the letter “S” for Sloan, a mother-of-pearl pin with the letter “K” from her grandfather Kemp, three small rings from Don’s grandmother and an angel symbolizing Deebs.

Young says it’s common for people to have collections of vintage jewelry that they never wear. But her bracelets give these pieces new purpose.

“It’s sad because people don’t wear their family jewelry because it sits in a box,” she says. “I can take an old clip–on earring and convert it into pierced (earring) or use it as a charm or drill a hole into a piece so it will hang.”

After Deebs’ death, Young continued to experience losses and challenges. Three months after Deebs died, she learned she had Stage 3 breast cancer. Six months after Deebs died, Young lost one of her closest friends. Nine months after that, Sloan lost her best friend to a brain tumor.

“There were so many losses and people who just seemed to slip away. It made me acutely aware of how important it is to make memories of people you love,” Young says. “The fact that Deebs died made it important for me to hold onto memories, but I think it’s important for everyone to keep their memories, too.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

Uncommon Folk, Our State Magazine

October 2010
By: Carole Perkins

Songs of Water combines multicultural sounds and anchors them in North Carolina’s rich musical traditions.

Stephen Roach pulls bells, whistles, and noisemakers from a green suitcase propped atop a chair on a small stage at The Green Bean, a coffee house in downtown Greensboro. Grabbing his djembe, he pounds his hands in a primitive rhythm. Drummer Michael Pritchard answers with a polyrhythmic beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. The audience grows restless with anticipation.

I scrape my chair back for the third time to make room for the burgeoning crowd until I’m almost sitting in the lap of Laura Galloway, a self-professed groupie who travels all over North Carolina to hear Roach’s band, Songs of Water.

“I think I’m addicted to their new CD,” I tell Galloway. “I have to listen to it every day.”

“I know; me, too,” she says, relieved to know another woman of a seasoned age shares her obsession.

Finally, classically trained violinist Marta Richardson adds her elegant strings to the pounding beat as Roach teases the hungry crowd.

“Are you ready to take off?” Roach asks. “All right, let’s see what happens.”

The band and the audience share a tangible bond. The musicians prefer playing to hometown crowds, basking in the love and support of family and friends. It feels right to give back to a community that offered support for so many years, Richardson says. “It’s a mutual understanding that we belong together, that we come from the same place and are on a journey together.”
Musical experiment

Songs of Water began about eight years ago as Roach’s vision to take traditional, multicultural sounds and combine them in an American, experimental fashion. He took his idea to friend and co-writer Jason Windsor. The two began collaborating and then invited Richardson to come on board. Richardson and Charlotte cellist Sarah Stephen bring sophistication to the folksy sound with their talent on the strings. Pritchard’s rhythm strikes a middle ground between tradition and innovation, while bass and guitar player Greg Willette echoes the distinctive Piedmont style, similar to Doc Watson and Etta Baker.

While on tour in California, the band’s serendipitous meeting with Luke and Molly Skaggs, son and daughter of bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs, added even more variety to the band’s sound. Luke contributes with the Irish bouzouki, violin, and vocals, and Molly plays the accordion and banjo, reflecting her studies of Appalachian mountain music.

“We didn’t originally think, ‘Let’s start a band with electric folk instruments and pursue this as a vocation,’ ” Roach says. “We soon realized that we had stumbled upon a very unique sound that needed to be heard by a larger audience.”

For two years, the band worked on its recently released CD, The Sea Has Spoken, which includes guests Ricky Skaggs and tuba player Mark Daumin, of the Chapel Hill band Lost in the Trees. While Skaggs provided Skaggs Place Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, for recording, North Carolina’s tight-knit music community buoyed the effort. Wake Forest University opened its doors for additional recording sessions and the use of percussion instruments. Joel Khouri, from Charlotte’s Bright City Studios, co-produced the album with the band. He made the long trips to Nashville and, in the end, pulled everything together from the various recording sessions.

Although listeners will hear more than 30 instruments on the new album — from dun duns to doumbeks — the songs still ring familiar. Traditional sounds from the hammered dulcimer, banjo, and acoustic guitar reflect North Carolina’s musical roots. All the musicians credit their North Carolina heritage for influencing their music.

“From Appalachia to Albemarle, from bluegrass to beach music, North Carolina’s rich musical history found its way into my heart and my fingertips,” Windsor says. “I’m continually grateful to have grown up in a state so passionate about art and music.”

On that small stage at The Green Bean, the band plays the last song of the set. Some of the band members close their eyes and lift their faces toward heaven, seeming to hear something meant for their ears only. But the crowd appreciates the privilege to listen in.

Carole Perkins is a freelance writer in Greensboro.